Toto

locked to split and clean up and everyone chill out

Amaleq13

You appear to be assuming that all "signs" must be, in and of themselves, miraculous and that is simply not true. It is clearly being used here in its primary meaning of "indication" or "marker". The only thing miraculous in this story is the alleged divine prediction of future events. The child is the focus not the mother. More specifically, the age of the child is the focus of the prophecy and not the nature of his conception.

Sorry, Toto, I had the thread open before you posted and didn't see you had locked it.

Toto

The thread is reopened. Please keep personal insults and complaints about the moderators out of this thread.

Apikorus

Straining to remember my elementary school grammar, I believe a simile (in English) is a comparison using the words "like" or "as." This is essentially what we have in Isa 62:5 (although Hebrew grammar is of course different and we don't have explicitly "like" or "as," other than ki, but mainly disparate elements in apposition):

For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isa 62:5)

Three of the four other instances, in 23:12, 37:22, and 47:1 all utilize the construction betulat bat-X = "virgin daughter of X" where X = tsidon (Sidon), tsiyyon (Zion), or bavel = Babylon, respectively. Thus in these four instances, including Isa 62:5, the term is applied to a group in a nonliteral way. In 23:4, the word betulot appears in conjunction with bechorim in what I have adduced as a well-attested construction in the Hebrew Bible.

The point you are trying to make regarding betulah in Isaiah is this (tell me if I'm wrong):

betulah appears five times in Isaiah, and four of the five times it is translated as parthenos. Since the LXX also has parthenos in Isa 7:14, we have cause to suspect that its Hebrew Vorlage read betulah rather than the MT's almah.

Is that a fair paraphrase?

My response to this is fivefold. First, the translator may have erred in dealing with Isa 7:14. As I mentioned earlier, Isaiah is among the most poorly / nonliterally / tendentiously translated books of the Hebrew Bible in the LXX. The evidence you yourself have adduced apparently attests to the translator's carelessness, since the three instances of the Hebrew betulat bat-X formula in 23:12, 37:22, and 47:1 are not uniformly rendered in the Greek. In 37:22 and 47:1, the LXX reads parthenos thugater X, while in 23:12, parthenos is for some reason omitted, leaving only thugatera Sidonos = "daughter of Sidon." Do you have an explanation for this, other than carelessness of the translator?

Second, while parthenos principally means "virgin," elsewhere in the LXX it refers to a woman who is clearly not a virgin, as in the case of Dinah after her rape by Shechem. So perhaps the translator's parthenos is here lexically equivalent to neanis, which itself does not appear in Isaiah.

Third, and as I have labored to demonstrate, the context in which the word betulah appears in Isaiah is very different than that of almah in Isa 7:14. In the latter case, the almah is a specific person. Had one or more of the instances of betulah been applied to a specific person, your argument would be stronger (though still specious, I believe).

Fourth, the literary context of Isa 7:10-16 makes it difficult for me to believe that the mother of Immanuel would be identified as a virgin. As I've written on this in some detail, I won't bore you by repeating my arguments.

Finally, to beat a dead horse to death (as Spiro Agnew once said), we have no Hebrew manuscripts of Isa 7:14 which read anything other than almah. The manuscript evidence extends back to the pre-Christian Qumran scroll 1QIsa(a). As the text of the Hebrew Bible was pluriform prior to the second century CE, we cannot be completely certain of anything. However, it was not a complete free-for-all, and the evidence for betulah in the Urtext of Isa 7:14 is exceedingly week, in my estimation.

darstec

Actually scripture does use messiah for King David and King Saul and for Aaron's sons, some hills, some altars, some bread, some pillars and even donkeys. Messiah simply means anointed one. Being "a messiah" an anointed one was nothing special. Even bread and donkeys were "oiled".

Here take a look for yourself.

και αρτους αζυμους πεφυραμενους εν ελαιω και λαγανα αζυμα κεχρισμενα εν ελαιω σεμιδαλιν εκ πυρων ποιησεις αυτα

Or Aaron's sons:
και η στολη του αγιου η εστιν ααρων εσται τοις υιοις αυτου μετ αυτον χρισθηναι αυτους εν αυτοις και τελειωσαι τας χειρας αυτων

τουτο το δωρον ααρων και των υιων αυτου ο προσοισουσιν κυριω εν τη ημερα η αν χρισης αυτον το δεκατον του οιφι σεμιδαλεως εις θυσιαν δια παντος το ημισυ αυτης το πρωι και το ημισυ αυτης το δειλινον

Even tabernacles:
και ελαβεν μωυσης απο του ελαιου της χρισεως

And in case you do not like Leviticus, Numbers says much the same thing about "messianic" tabernacles.

Here Samuel talks about his "messianic" king:
κυριος ασθενη ποιησει αντιδικον αυτου κυριος αγιος μη καυχασθω ο φρονιμος εν τη φρονησει αυτου και μη καυχασθω ο δυνατος εν τη δυναμει αυτου και μη καυχασθω ο πλουσιος εν τω πλουτω αυτου αλλ η εν τουτω καυχασθω ο καυχωμενος συνιειν και γινωσκειν τον κυριον και ποιειν κριμα και δικαιοσυνην εν μεσω της γης κυριος ανεβη εις ουρανους και εβροντησεν αυτος κρινει ακρα γης και διδωσιν ισχυν τοις βασιλευσιν ημων και υψωσει κερας χριστου αυτου

and specifically here where King Saul is made a "messiah" by Samuel:
και ελαβεν σαμουηλ τον φακον του ελαιου και επεχεεν επι την κεφαλην αυτου και εφιλησεν αυτον και ειπεν αυτω ουχι κεχρικεν σε κυριος εις αρχοντα επι τον λαον αυτου επι ισραηλ και συ αρξεις εν λαω κυριου και συ σωσεις αυτον εκ χειρος εχθρων αυτου κυκλοθεν και τουτο σοι το σημειον οτι εχρισεν σε κυριος επι κληρονομιαν αυτου εις αρχοντα

And again Samuel reiterates that King Saul is a messiah:
ιδου εγω αποκριθητε κατ εμου ενωπιον κυριου και ενωπιον χριστου αυτου μοσχον τινος ειληφα η ονον τινος ειληφα η τινα κατεδυναστευσα υμων η τινα εξεπιεσα η εκ χειρος τινος ειληφα εξιλασμα και υποδημα αποκριθητε κατ εμου και αποδωσω υμιν

And then, oh my gosh, what do we see in Samuel but that god is going to choose David as a "messiah":
ιδου εγω αποκριθητε κατ εμου ενωπιον κυριου και ενωπιον χριστου αυτου μοσχον τινος ειληφα η ονον τινος ειληφα η τινα κατεδυναστευσα υμων η τινα εξεπιεσα η εκ χειρος τινος ειληφα εξιλασμα και υποδημα αποκριθητε κατ εμου και αποδωσω υμιν

I could post quite a few more demonstrating that David was Christos but even one should suffice. And there are even more examples of Messiah/Christos characters in scripture.

So you loose big time. Your god refers to David as a messiah. Why can you not? Messiahship is not as big a deal as you want to suppose. It simply meant some one or something (bread, hills, pillars, and even donkeys) were anointed and dedicated to god.

And just in case you think Jesus was special in that regard notice the exact same word is used not only for Jesus but also Paul and the Corinthians to which he writes:
ο δε βεβαιων ημας συν υμιν εις χριστον και χρισας ημας θεος

I of course left out at least 60 other NT references and multiple OT references to messiah/christos.

Diogenes the Cynic

The pregnancy wasn't supposed to be a magic trick, it was just pointed at as something for Ahaz to mark time with. Neither the pregnancy nor the child had any special per se significance to the prophecy. God said, "before that kid is of elementary school age your enemies will be gone." It's no different than saying "before this football game is over," or "before the snow melts."

Gamera

I really think this overlooks the messianic mentality of 1st century Judaism, in which messiah meant more than just the literal sense of being annointed. Clearly Israeli kings could undergo an annointing separating them out; but that doesn't seem to be the point of the messainic mentality where the annointing is meant metaphorically to define a special individual who brings salvation to Israel on some level or other. The messianic writings I quoted seem to be in that latter vein, and of course, all the NT literature relating to Jesus' messiahood falls under this later category.

Apikorus

Be careful in exegeting a passage based on the grammar of the English translation. ata yodea likro ivrit?

The Hebrew word )wt = "sign", vocalized ot, appears frequently in the Hebrew Bible. It connotes a recognizable marker or event, which can be either miraculous, such as the sun turning back on Hezekiah's dial, or mundane, such as the Sabbath.

The expression otot umoftim = "signs and wonders" itself appears many times throughout the Hebrew Bible, usually in connection with YHWH's actions on behalf of the Israelites in Egypt. Isaiah uses it in Isa 8:18, where he and his children are "for signs and for wonders" in Israel.

One of Isaiah's children is maher-shalal-hash-baz (MSHB for short), whose birth and significance are recounted earlier in chapter 8, in Isa 8:3-4. This MSHB unit is clearly parallel to the Immanuel unit in Isa 7:10-16. In both cases, the birth of a male child with a symbolic name is a significant event, and the child himself is a chronological marker to which a prophecy of redemption is pegged. Both units use the same precise language, ki b'terem yeida hana'ar X = "for before the child knows how to X, in announcing the prophecy.

The birth of MSHB is entirely ordinary. Isaiah goes to his wife, who conceives, and bears a son. The ordinariness of MSHB's birth, the strong parallels between the MSHB and Immanuel units, and the fact that MSHB is to serve as a sign according to Isa 8:18, combine to rule out any interpretation of a miraculous birth for Immanuel in 7:14.

Gamera

I'm happy with a nonmiraculous definition of sign, but miraculous or not, a sign must stand out in some way so that it is percieved as a sign. A pregnancy by a young woman doesn't meet that standard since, as I say, presumably young women in Israel got pregnant every day. So a pregancy couldn't act as a marker only because there were pregnancies happening all the time.

But what I hear you saying is that the sign is in fact not the pregancy at all but the future events involving various disastrous events for Israel. Ok, what do those signs signify? They seem to be not the signs but the signified.

Here's how I would put it.

1. [traditional Christian exegesis]: Sign (miraculous pregancy) signifies Israel's disaster.

As I understand your interpretation this is the structure:

2. [Rabbinical exegesis] Sign (Israel's disaster) signifies _____________?

And it's this blank I don't understand.

Gamera

See my discussion below. The problem turns on "recognizable." Young women get pregnant all the time, so another pregnancy seems an impossible marker, since it isn't recognizable as a sign.

Now a miraculous pregnancy is another matter. That can indeed be a recognizable marker for future events.